I was a former senior manager at KPMG and since 1994 the owner of the Marks Group PC, a 10 person customer relationship management consulting firm based outside Philadelphia. I've written six small-business management books, most recently "The Manufacturer's Book of List" and “In God We Trust, Everyone Else Pays Cash: Simple Lessons From Smart Business People.” Besides Forbes, I daily for The Washington Post and weekly for Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and the Huffington Post monthly for Philadelphia Magazine. I am an unpaid contributor to Forbes. I make no compensation from the number of people who read what I write here. Follow me on Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In.

How Spam Was Solved

When I was a little kid I used to have really bad asthma attacks. For hours I wasn’t able to breathe. At the time the best treatment was for my mom or dad to sit with me in our bathroom while the shower ran at its hottest, hoping the steam would loosen up the tightness in my chest. A few years later my doctor prescribed a medicine that helped. It was a red, thick syrup laced with codeine and would wire me up for hours. Today, I take ADVAIR, which I inhale once a morning. ADVAIR is made by GlaxoSmithKline. When it came out there was little fanfare. But, like millions of others who suffer from asthma, this drug keeps our problems under control.

Just like spam.

It was only a decade ago when spam e-mail was considered to be one of the biggest problems facing technology. Billions of unwanted emails were received around the world every week. We all know about them. We used to joke about them. But spam was a huge problem. Most of my clients complained to me about it all the time. They were spending hours deleting unwanted solicitations from royal family members in Nigeria who wanted to share their millions or companies promising endless nights of fun with their cheap Viagra. The security software at the time was resource intensive and slowed down their networks. Their IT guys were useless in solving the problem. And, with one bad click, an employee could release an attached virus that would attack a company’s workstations and servers, rendering them unworkable for days and days.

Did you notice something? Like my asthma, the problem of spam seems to be under control. In fact, Microsoft confirmed this just last week. And, like the introduction of ADVAIR, there wasn’t a whole lot of news about it.

In just the past year alone, the amount of email spam blocked before reaching inboxes has dropped by two-thirds. Microsoft reported that 21.9 billion emails were blocked in May 2011 using their online protection services compared to 89.2 billion emails blocked in July 2010. This means that the number of spam emails detected is way, way down.

Yes, the Viagra and Nigerian financial scam emails are still around. But, like asthma, they seem to be under control for now. What happened?

Think about your inbox today compared to what it was just a few years ago. How many emails did you receive this morning that were unwanted? And don’t tell me you didn’t want your Buffalo Bills weekly update…except when they lose to the Giants? Your business is less affected by spam now than it ever was. You do not have these costs and productivity concerns anymore. What seemed like an insurmountable problem only a few years ago has been brought under control.

So how did this happen? It’s not a big surprise to many business people. But Republicans and Democrats: You may want to pay attention. Problems, even giant problems, are solve-able.

For starters, the technology has improved. Leaders in security like McAfee and Symantec have learned to make their spam detection software less bloated and more nimble. They’re using the cloud to disseminate information on new risks almost immediately. They’ve analyzed millions of emails and learned to isolate the ones that are most probably spam using combinations of keywords, formatting, content and origin.

E-mail applications are also smarter. The typical user of Microsoft Outlook (and there are more than a hundred million of them) is guided through quick wizards to set up spam protection and is prompted to file away suspicious emails for later review. Other email applications use similar practices. Nowadays even if an email does make it through the server side, it’s isolated at the client side before it becomes a problem. Improvements in technology can help solve just about any problem, from spam and asthma to the budget deficit (example: can anyone really tell me how much health care reform will cost?)

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